WEARING your Welshness on your sleeve in a job application could cost you dear, graduates are being warned.

WEARING your Welshness on your sleeve in a job application could cost you dear, graduates are being warned.

According to a guide published by a Scottish university Welsh, Scottish and Irish graduates should write British in an application form's nationality box if they want to avoid being labelled troublesome nationalists.

Last night Welsh businesses condemned the advice from Aberdeen University, saying there was no sign in recruitment trends that people who said they were Welsh would face discrimination in the jobs market.

A spokesman for Aberdeen University said, "In the feedback from our business contacts we have been told applicants who declare their nationality as British are more likely to get an interview than those who put down Scottish, Welsh or Irish."

The guide book was compiled by Locker Madden, head of the careers and appointments service at the university.

He is reported to have said, "Some employers might see 'Scottish' on the application form and think, 'This might be a daft bloke in a kilt who will celebrate Bannockburn and upset me'."

The director of CBI Wales, David Rosser, said the employers' organisation was not aware of any evidence that people putting Welsh as their nationality rather than British on application forms were being disadvantaged in the jobs market.

"Such a situation would be a worrying trend," he said. "However, I believe that employers are more concerned about a candidate's qualities and experience when considering them for jobs than issues such as nationality."

One of Wales's leading enterprise academics, Professor Dylan Jones Evans at the University of Wales, Bangor, said, "I would very much doubt that any company that is looking for the right employee would consider that.

"Also, I very much doubt that someone would be breaking the law like that."

Just as the Government is trying to outlaw discrimination in sex, age and religion, nationality is another branch.

Huw Lewis, of Cymdeithas yr Iaith, the Welsh Language Society, said he found the advice from the University of Aberdeen careers service as shocking.

"I also find it strange that someone would base their decision on that," he said. "After devolution it is natural that people feel more comfortable expressing Welsh nationality and there is a growth of Welsh feeling, but it is shocking to hear if that is happening."

People who live in the UK are officially classed as British and hold British passports but it is the norm for people to state the area of the UK where they come from.

William Ab Ioan, of Cymuned, said that people who would label the Welsh, Irish and Scottish as troublesome nationalists and so would not hire them would have missed out on some of the great people in history.

"If it wasn't for the Scottish then we would not have had people like Alexander Bell, and all of the contributions of the Welsh and Irish," he said.

"It is basically laughable and ignorant of that careers office based on its lack of knowledge and gullibility."

Like many other people, Mr Ab Ioan said he believed that jobs were offered according to a person's ability and not which nationality they ticked.

Though it is unlikely that employers around the UK would admit to discriminating in such a way, the converse question is whether English applicants would be rejected if they applied for a job in Scotland, Wales or Ireland.

The head of careers at the University of Glamorgan, Euros Evans, said it would make little difference what nationality a candidate put down.

"There are other clues in the application form to say where you are from and we would certainly not be advising pupils on way or another on this," he said. "I have been involved in short-listing staff before and surely there are more important things to look for than nationality.

"They should put down what they feel comfortable, and as long as they make sure they fill in the job criteria and have met all of the required fields that is more important."